Studying Elections, Parties and Voters

This is a book about voters, politicians, parties (sometimes referred to as ‘actors’) and electoral politics (sometimes seen as the ‘stage’ upon which these actors perform). In it we see elections as providing a sort of ritualized encounter in which voters engage politicians and parties. In order to understand the nature of these encounters, we need to describe how they fit into the wider political system — by which we mean both the institutions of government and the party system (electoral systems are described in Chapter 3). So first we will distinguish three fundamental types of institutional context on the basis of the differences in these characteristics. Subsequently we will argue that these wider contexts and the largely institutionalized ways in which elections are conducted provide the opportunity for learning to take place and habits to form, both for voters and for parties.